Letters: Bountiful residents seek a more fiscally conservative city hall

The Davis Clipper

Sep 03, 2013 | 2700 views | 1 | 36 | |

Editor's Note: This is a copy of a letter submitted to the Bountiful City mayor and city council. Dean Collinwood submitted it to the paper for publication as well.

Dear Mayor and City

Council Members,

We note with appreciation your desire to improve conditions on the city hall campus, but we find the price tag of your proposal too high.

As we understand it, a new city hall would cost up to $10.5 million of taxpayers’ money, while retrofitting the current city hall for art and history use would require an additional $4 million (of RDA funds). That comes to a total cost of $14.5 million.

We doubt that there will be enough improved efficiency in services to the citizens to justify such a price tag. Moreover, putting a building on the site of the former Bountiful/Davis Art Center will obscure the view of the city campus from Main Street.

Therefore, we urge you to consider a more fiscally conservative plan. According to one reliable source, the current city hall could be upgraded for just $2 million. This would allow it to serve our city for many decades to come. Building a new art and history center would, according to Smith Hyatt Architects, cost only $3 million. This more conservative plan would allow for the improvements you have in mind but at a cost of only $5 million, saving the citizens $9.5 million for use on other needed projects.

Finally, we recommend the new art and history building be constructed north of the current city hall, thus allowing the space formerly occupied by the Bountiful/Davis Art Center to be landscaped into a beautiful entrance to the city hall campus. This plan would open the city campus to view from Main Street and would result in the most impressive city hall campus anywhere in Davis County.

All this could be accomplished for just $5 million instead of $14.5 million. This would be a wise and conservative use of tax dollars, and we urge you to adopt this less expensive approach.

We also respectfully ask that at the next city council or other related meetings, the council refrain from taking any action that would promote a new city hall building. Please give yourselves and the public time to ponder the benefits of the less costly plan. Specifically we ask that you schedule a meeting open to the public for the purpose of giving the public an opportunity to be heard on this issue.